Web sites are an integral part of an organization's operations. Web sites are used to actively promote companies and products, deliver services and information, manage transactions, and facilitate communications. One way in which web sites are managed is through the server that provides the web site content. A server is a computing device on a network that manages various network services. For example, a file server is a computing and storage device dedicated to storing files. A user on the network can store files on the file server. A print server is a computing device that manages one or more printers or other peripheral devices. A network server is a computing device that manages network traffic and allows for direction of traffic to various web sites.
Servers are often dedicated, meaning that they perform no other tasks besides their server tasks. On multiprocessing operating systems, however, a single computing device may execute several programs at once. A server in this case may refer to the program that is managing resources rather than the entire computer.
Regardless of the server type, a server is configurable by an administrator or other user to operate in a selected manner. A server may have thousands of server related configuration settings that may be selected to affect the server's performance. With the sheer number of server settings that may be adjusted, management of these server configuration settings may become difficult for users that do not possess an intimate knowledge the server's capabilities.